Topic: Reinventing Religion
This course is a consideration of some recent attempts to reinvent
or reimagine the idea of religion in the wake of the critique of
standard models that come out of the Enlightenment, theology,
sociology, and anthropology. The authors we will read are diverse in
their diagnosis of what is the weakness of these models, but they
share the conviction that something has been left out, be it
politics, economies, the secular, ideology, biopolitics, or the
perspectives of cultural studies. The course will be run in seminar
form, and will presume at least some familiarity with major thinkers
and questions in the study of religion and philosophy.